Daniel Ek Quotes

The income streams of musicians have all been upstreamed into the pockets of computer corporations. Sound recordings are little more than free crackerjacks inside every computer or cellphone that you buy.

I don't think piracy is going to kill the music industry. But digital technology and the ability to download will change the packaging from CDs to a single-based business.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't think music should be free.

Spotify is returning a huge amount of money. We'll overtake iTunes in terms of what we bring to the record industry in under two years.

Any time you can give consumers more of what they want, it's a good thing. Unbundling the album is a good thing. In the case of music - because it is content that you can slice into songs - doing that is of huge benefit to consumers.

I realised that you can never legislate away from piracy. Laws can definitely help, but it doesn't take away the problem. The only way to solve the problem was to create a service that was better than piracy and at the same time compensates the music industry - that gave us Spotify.

With Spotify and all those streaming services, you don't get paid anything. You have to be, like, Madonna or something to actually make a real royalty from that.

Music is everywhere - you consume it every day, everywhere you go. The content creator should be compensated. It's only fair.

We are passionate about making it so that users enjoy the music that they want to enjoy but at the same time fairly compensates artists. That's not the same as saving the music industry.

I think the cool thing about being alive in 2017 is that you can literally put out music as soon and as frequently as you want to because of streaming services.

I have had the good fortune to experience both the limelight and the traffic light as a musician. I did my first recording on my own and it was available at concerts. The second to seventh were released on small and then large labels. My eighth to 14th were done under my own steam once again, but with the benefit of the Internet.

I would never put my songs in a commercial.

Any time that you can give the consumer more of what they want, it's a good thing. I said from Day 1 that the unbundling of the album is a good thing.

Sheet music, recording, radio, television, cassettes, CD burners, and file sharing have all invalidated, to some extent, the old model of making a living making music.

I feel like, as musicians, we need to fight the Spotify thing. I feel that in some ways what's happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen.

I think another thing is that we don't really want exclusivity. We accept that it is in the artist's interest to be on sale in every place where they sell music.

For the first case I did with Octone, 360 deals were not at all being talked about. And then for the follow-up case, it was the focus. I wanted to see how things were changing and what the new challenges were.

Napster has pointed the way for a new direction for music distribution, and we believe it will form the basis of important and exciting new business models for the future of the music industry.

I think downloading is both saving and killing the music industry at the same time.

It's very easy for people to put out music.

A protracted legislative fight will not move us closer to where the music industry wants to be - delivering music to fans through a variety of different, innovative Web sites.

There are musicians who want to make a living making music. There are listeners who want to listen to music. Complicating this relationship is a whole bunch of history: some of the music I want to listen to was made a while ago in a different economy. Some of the models of making a living making music are no longer valid but persist.

I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it.

And once the music is out there, when you're selling a record and selling music and people are going to do whatever they want with it, it's kind of hard to resist certain opportunities, especially in the record market now.

Music is more available than ever. It's up to people to figure out. Ultimately, it's up to the business to figure out what the business is, monetizing that.